Q - assuming the NAS was strictly used as NAS and not as a server with VMs, is there a point in having a large amount of RAM? (large as in >8GB)

I'm not sure what the benefit would be since all it's doing is moving information from the drives over to the network.

I have built 2 NAS that borrow ideas from his blogs. One uses the Silverstone CS382 case (6x 6TB SAS) and the other uses a Topton N5105 Mini-ITX board (6x 10TB SATA). I'm quite happy with both.

ref: https://blog.briancmoses.com/2024/07/migrating-my-diy-nas-in...

Very sad that HDDs, SSDs, and RAM are all increasing in price now, but I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool with Seagate Barracudas on sale at $10 / TB [1]. This seems like a pretty decent price even though the Barracudas are rated for 2400 hours per year [2] but this is the same spec that the refurbished Exos drives are rated for.

By the way, interesting to see that OP has no qualms about buying cheap Chinese motherboards, but splurged for an expensive Noctua fan when the cheaper Thermalright TL-B12 perform just as well for a lot cheaper (although the Thermalright could be slightly louder and perhaps be a slightly more annoying spectrum).

Also, it is mildly sad that there aren't many cheap low power (< 500 W) power supplies for SFX form factor. The SilverStone Technology SX500-G 500W SFX that was mentioned retails for the same price as 750 W and 850 W SFX PSUs on Amazon! I heard good things about getting Delta flex 400 W PSUs from Chinese websites --- some companies (e.g. YTC) mod them to be fully modular, and they are supposedly quite efficient (80 Plus Gold/Platinum) and quiet, but I haven't tested them out yet. On Taobao, those are like $30.

[1] https://www.newegg.com/seagate-barracuda-st24000dm001-24tb-f...

[2] https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/en/content-fragm...

I researched a bunch of cases recently and the Jonsbo, while it looked good, came up as having a ton of issues with airflow to cool the drives. Because of this, I ended up buying the Fractal Node 804 case, which seemed to have a better overall quality level and didn't require digging around AliExpress for a vendor.